Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

I had ordered Verizon's Double Play package on the internet and this gave me DSL and local phone service for $44.99 a month for 12 months and the router and shipping was free as they claimed. They said they could possibly do up to 7Megabit/second with this package and they'd need to provision the line and see what the actual rate was.

I did get the modem and set it up and it was provisioned on the day they said it would be and it worked great but speed as limited to 3.3Megabit/second. I was satisfied this was good enough and decided I'd keep the service.

A while later I received a bill they claimed for 2 months of service and the total, to my amazement, was over $212.00. I expected for 2 months to be billed about $100 give or take including taxes and FCC crud etc. This was over twice that. Looking at the bill I see I was overcharged for the montly rate, I was charged for the modem itself that I was told was free and I was charged about $20.00 to ship it. Of course this was not what I had been told online.

I called their 800 number and spoke to a rude guy named Keith who said no, I had placed the order on the phone and this is what I ordered. He just kept stonewalling, not answering my questions in this real passive aggressive way and kept claiming I had not ordered what I had ordered. At some point I do reserve the right to be the customer and always be right, and this was one of them.

I went on to say what difference does this make since if I called would they not have offered me the same package anyway? And just because I did not know by calling and not seeing the online sale they'd not offer it anyway? Other than that I do know what I did order and what I had been told and even had their initial statement mailed to me saying just that and the online code that the website generated for me to check the order.

Keith accepted all of this and then said no sir, you placed the order over the phone. I was getting upset now and said, look, if so then you can tell me who I spoke with, there was a pause and he said no, I can't see who that might be. I went on to say that since I am the customer, despite what you may think I'd like the package I ordered and this is what I ordered. If you'd like to place the order for me and give me what you want, then you pay for it since this is what you ordered and not I. He started giving me more of a hard time, keep in mind this was about ten minutes this went on and he was not sorry at all for the confusion, just kept giving me this monotonic reply to all of it and just coming back to the same, ordered it on the phone thing. At this point it was too much and I said look, either make it right or you are going to eat the 2 month's of service and hung up on him.

I got a call back about 2 hours later and he asked me to call him back and I did, and he then went on to say they will give me the modem free and waive the shipping and they will give me 15Megabit/second for $49.99/month. I said if you are willing to do that, I will accept that package, but I knew they'd never make 15Megabit/second on copper wire where I was at. If they think they can and want to do that, fine let them try. Of course they never could and only got to just over 7Megabit, guess what? They got dropped and are not getting paid. I won't be treated like that and I have other options. I'd suggest you try something else also. Unless you just want to sit next to the phone line and wait for a bill to come in the mail and see what you ordered next? I mean just let them decide what you want and how much you are going to pay for it. It is not up to you after all!

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.